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Why You Shouldn’t Worry About SEO Costs But Focus On What It Earns

You’re at Victoria Park in Ontario, preparing to swing from an 80-foot cliff and fly 200 feet across Elora Gorge before rappelling down to the river like a human spider.

Your guide asks you to pick a rope.

Would you ask for the cheapest rope — or the strongest?

Will you look for the shortest length — or one long enough to reach the ground?

Obvious, right?

Yet, business owners rarely apply the same logic when it comes to making business decisions. They look for the cheapest SEO solutions, wanting to pay the lowest hourly rate, for the fewest hours just to save a few dollars.

Their business, not surprisingly, is left dangling in mid-air — with no way to land safely!

Asking how much SEO costs isn’t logical. It’s the wrong question. The same goes for comparing SEO services on a price-per-hour basis. After all, when it comes to search engine optimization, there is no such thing as a “one size fits all” solution.

What’s Involved In Effective SEO?

In order to help your business leverage search traffic optimally, SEO consultants must first understand your business and your goals or targets. They will have to:

Assess risks and opportunities

Analyze the marketplace and your competition

Review your current activities and resources

Only then can they begin to develop a strategic SEO plan designed to rocket your business website to the front page of Google.

Each business is unique. Even within the same industry, individual companies are at different stages of growth and evolution. And, SEO services are diverse and varied.

Every marketing campaign is distinct from one another. Effective SEO service providers rarely price on a fixed-price plan — most will quote you for their work based on:

How long they expect to spend on your optimizing your website or executing your SEO strategy

The level of insight, knowledge and experience they bring to the table

Some SEO firms prefer being on a monthly retainer while others will contract their services at a fixed price. A few set budgets based on a specific project or might quote you a “per hour” rate.

What Should You Expect To Pay For SEO?

Pricing is never precise. Some consultants will base their quote on guesswork, often making tall claims or over-the-top promises that are difficult to fulfill. Others will be overcautious, requiring extensive analysis and a trial run or a pilot project to gain insights into what might be required before they will provide an estimate.

As a part of the preliminary assessment, you may be asked for estimates of organic search traffic, sales data and ROI metrics. This will help an SEO expert identify profitable target keywords and evaluate their conversion rate and profit potential.

The additional preparatory work might cost more, but it’s easy to justify the additional expense once you realize that it will make all subsequent SEO efforts more effective and profitable.

The SEO Litmus Test: How To Spot Quality SEO

There are some SEO service providers that peddle package deals — off-the-shelf solutions that promise a series of actions for a fixed rate. No prizes for guessing how well those work!

In contrast to these “cookie cutter” solutions are the premium, custom-designed hardcore SEO services, where specialist consultants with more than a decade of SEO experience will personally handle your account.

Image Credit: iStockphoto

And then there are content management system (CMS) vendors who throw in SEO “for free” or at a “rock bottom discount.” Or the web designer whose cousin (or nephew) is a “great programmer” who can “fix” the SEO and save you a lot of money. Picking these options just because they cost less is a risk. Your aim as a business owner should be profit maximization, not cost cutting at the expense of lost sales and revenue.

The worst kind is what I call “checklist SEO,” where a vendor will follow a standardized process and go through a list of things to do, checking them off a list when they are finished. This happens more often than you might imagine and quickly leaves your business website in a sticky situation.

Instead of a sustainable, adaptive long-term plan, you’re left with a series of one-off tasks which likely won’t be relevant a year from now. Before you know it, your search rankings sink as your competition gains ground. You got “cheap SEO” — and it cost you the business!

Is Limited Service SEO A Good Deal?

So, if “cheap” SEO is bad and your budget is limited is “limited service SEO” a valid option?

Look, let’s be bluntly honest here. A good SEO consultant doesn’t just come in, tweak some text content, build a few back links and say goodbye. There’s a lot more to sustainable SEO.

SEO training is a part of the deal, so that important knowledge can be shared with your team and value added to the project. Some of my search marketing clients just want SEO “installed” or rankings achieved. That isn’t how it works.

SEO Is More Than Link Building Or Even Content Marketing

Business owners sometimes view SEO as pure link building and little else. They ask for a quote to build x number of links every month and then evaluate bids based on the cost per link — without really understanding how these links are created or how link quality differs based on location.

Forum signatures, blog comments, press releases and social media back links have varying weight and impact on search ranking

Links from authoritative sites are worth their weight in gold

Great content marketing can attract links of high value and long-term benefits

There’s no single magic tool that will by itself dramatically improve your site’s ranking. Even if there once was, those days are long gone. SEO just doesn’t work that way anymore.

Modern SEO Is A Living, Dynamic Thing

As an SEO consultant, my toughest challenge is to convince business owners that SEO is not a one-off “project.” In 2013 alone, Google released 665 updates to its search algorithm or user interface. In the face of such rapid and frequent change, SEO cannot afford to remain static.

It must adapt and evolve

It must be nurtured and maintained

It must expand and explore

Businesses must decide if they’re going to stay ahead of the competition or lag behind in the race to the top — and staying ahead begins by changing the way you think about SEO. If you keep flitting from one short-lived tactic to the next without understanding the big picture or SEO strategy, you’re putting your business at risk.

Sure, SEO is hard to sell or justify because it is “invisible,” and the constantly changing algorithms make it difficult to attribute results and better rankings solely to the changes you’ve made. So it is tempting to select the vendor that:

Dazzles you with pretty pages

Demonstrates a formulaic model of submitting X articles

Promises to build X links

Guarantees page 1 rankings on Google (as if anyone could control that!)

The thing is, if SEO is done by blindly following a formula or checklist, that means that your strategy is failing to take into account the unique benefits of (and challenges faced by) your business.

User Intent Has Never Been More Important

The only “guaranteed” way to reap SEO advantages for the long term is by creating focused content that addresses your prospective buyers’ burning desires or most pressing problems.

Great content can set you apart from the crowd. If it’s link-worthy, then your audience will spread it virally across their online networks. Social media is excellent for amplifying reach, bringing you quality traffic for weeks, months or even years.

Modern SEO Is Hybrid Marketing

True SEO specialists are multi-faceted marketing experts. They need deep insight, knowledge and expertise across many different areas and disciplines. This isn’t something you acquire by going to college or getting a degree. It comes from long, hard, in-the-trenches practice.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying programmers or web designers cannot become good SEO service providers. But they will need a lot of practice. A good SEO specialist should:

Know a bit of coding

Have a smattering of designing knowledge

Study conversion optimization

Understand user interfaces

Know buyer psychology

Learn about sales and economics

Get familiar with Internet methodology and technology

And that’s not all.

Today’s SEO consultant needs to be an expert on Google search and stay abreast of the hundreds of yearly changes, understanding how each impacts and influences existing ranking factors.

This means you can’t judge an SEO consultant by looking at academic qualifications alone. Someone with no formal education but extensive practical experience could be 100 times more valuable to a business than a brilliant, highly qualified marketing graduate with no track record.

The SEO playing field is changing rapidly. Tactics become quickly outdated and lose effectiveness. Often, tactics that were once considered legitimate are now considered spammy and thus may incur penalties which drive down your rankings.

High quality SEO delivered in a personalized fashion by a truly versatile expert can inoculate your business against these risks — ensuring that it not only survives but thrives.

How much is that worth paying for?

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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Colby

Nice post Trond. Another way to help spot quality SEO is to consider what kind of questions the SEO consultant asking you as the business owner? Is the SEO expert asking about your overall business as well as online goals, how you envision your website (and SEO) supporting your goals, who your target customers and competitors are, what industry trends might be affecting your market, etc.? Or are they just asking you which keywords you want to rank for and how many pages you want them to write title tags for? An SEO consultant who wants to truly know your business in order to become a strategic partner and develop the right SEO strategies and tactics will be worth much more in the long run.

opedmkt

Great post Trond, too many times we’ve had to pick up and rebuild SEO programs from these cheaper “cookie cutter” companies that do little more than build spammy links.

Petur J Petursson

Very good post Trond. On the education note: I am not an expert, merely following what’s going on in SEO from a business perspective but I dare guarantee you that anyone fresh out of school will probably be sitting on 18 month old information at best. These things move so fast that if you’re out one week it takes you a full day to catch up. Problem is even track record might not prove to be sufficient, what worked well 6 months ago wont work today. I agree with Colby, there must be an interest in what the business is all about, a display of business understanding. Obviously being published on Search Engine Land doesn’t hurt either ;-) – Joke aside, could be a good question to ask, ‘- Are you published somewhere?’. Maybe also always seek second opinion, and make sure compensation is tied to FINANCIAL performance?

Brad Krupkin

I would argue that being published is not a good indicator of SEO success. Many of us that do in-house SEO have a team of writers at our disposal that publish our suggestions. There is no need to publish my own work, especially in the vertical I work in, that would lend any credibility to our consumer base.

There are so many facets to strong SEO that go well beyond publishing content that should be considered when deciding on an SEO partner for your business.

Petur J Petursson

Valid points Brad. And yes, it was primarily meant as a pun directed towards my friend Trond. The ‘being published’ thing really boils down to authority and trust (Real Life SEO). And is obviously not a singular point of failure or success. From my side, the buyer side, it is for most of my peers an absolute nightmare picking the right supplier and I am frequently being ask, pro bono, to have a look due to my at least wannabe levels of knowledge. I want to thank Trond again for at least trying to give some hints to a lot of mere mortals out there grappling to get their heads around this so important subject.

Rajesh_magar

Hi Trond,
That was truly magnificent and all mentioned scenario are the 100% truth. Seriously for me some times it’s get so disrupting to tackle with the clients like these.

http://www.thoughtwiremarketing.com Larry Betts

Very good post! My only suggestion would be to rephrase “Links from authoritative sites are worth their weight in gold”…exactly how much does a link from an authoritative site weigh? :D

I really dig the fact that you brought up User Intent. My question is do you have any idea how to convey to a client that user intent is more important than anything? I have tried a few different tactics, and feel like they’ve all kind of fallen flat. Some of them are used to the spammy backlink world, others are used to seeing how many keywords can be stuffed above the fold. When we explain that we do things differently, we tend to lose a client’s interest, even though they’ve seen the old tactics not working.

Kathy Long

Really great post, Trong. It’s so important that businesses understand this. SEO, done right, is not quick, nor is it easy. And I totally agree with your list of qualifications and honestly can’t imagine doing SEO without all those skills in my resume and tool belt, and I’m sure any good SEO will say the same. In fact, I think you just described an SEO Masters Degree curriculum, if there were such a thing, although I would add marketing and good old English (or other language) grammar and copy writing to the mix. Oh, and maybe calculus. Why that? Because SEO requires great deductive reasoning and problem solving skills as well. It’s not hard to imagine some serious returns if that’s the SEO you had working for you.